The remarkable Rudd has a plan to stay

The ALP may have reinstated Kevin Rudd as party leader in a bid to save the furniture, but the party should have known it would not end there. Kevin is here to be Prime Minister. And it might take a while, writes Annabel Crabb.

Twenty-six Caucus members changed their votes between last year's leadership vote and this year's.

Their thoughts are their own, of course, but as a group their reasoning was fairly clear; disaster lay ahead with Julia Gillard, so best pop Kevin back in, to save the furniture.

One wonders what they might have been thinking as they watched their recycled Prime Minister at the National Press Club yesterday.

Because if it hadn't already dawned on them before the PM's one-man debate about the economy, it must have been fairly clear by the time Mr Rudd concluded things with a purse-lipped "I thank you": Kevin is not here to save the furniture. Kevin is here to be Prime Minister. And it might take a while.

Any fond hopes his colleagues had that Rudd Redux would involve a brief period of "Hail, my beloved people", followed promptly by an election campaign that would duly consign several dozen fewer Labor MPs to the ranks of the unemployed than would have met that fate under Ms Gillard must now be abandoned as the crack-addled hallucination they always were.

In the past fortnight, the rebooted Ruddbot - sleeves rolled up, and sunny as ever - has announced his intention to:

Renegotiate the reforms previously known as Gonski.

Sort out Australia's refugee situation.

Revisit the sole parent welfare changes.

Shift the carbon tax to a floating price.

Radically reform the Labor Party's rules so as to make it incredibly difficult to remove a sitting prime minister (this is Mr Rudd's Crusade Against Old Politics, in which the business of being beastly to each other is consigned permanently to the dustbin. A less charitable descriptor might be Pulling Up The Drawbridge, but everyone seems to be copping it sweet in the ALP. Lord only knows what sort of fuss would have been made if Julia Gillard had attempted any such thing)

Build a new Accord-style productivity bargain between unions, business and government.

Resuscitate the nation's attempt to incorporate Indigenous Australians into the constitution.

Debate Tony Abbott up hill and down dale, given half a chance.

The Opposition Leader didn't turn up to the Press Club yesterday for the first of the debates unilaterally scheduled by Mr Rudd, at which the pair was due to discuss matters pertaining to the economy.

It turned out fine though, because the PM - a practised self-interrogator - simply debated himself for an hour or so, and showed some bar charts.

He also explained his seven-point plan for rebuilding productivity, which was explained at some length using the "Verbal Dot Point" rhetorical technique he perfected in his first stint as prime minister.

He gave a potted history of his past speeches and remarks on economic policy, from the moment he was "elected prime minister" in 2007 all the way through the global financial crisis until 2010. Of the period between 2010 and 2013, he did not speak.

By the time the cheese platters arrived, Mr Rudd had additionally promised a lightning trip to Papua New Guinea next week, after which - he assured the audience - he would seek out the Premier of Tasmania to talk about worryingly high levels of Apple Isle unemployment, though he would not neglect Queensland either (expect a visit, one gathers).

Betting agencies, journalists, partisans and punters are tensed for the Prime Minister to announce an election date. But does this - honestly - sound like a man who is prepared to give it away any time soon?

Can you seriously imagine this man giving up the evanescent prospect of multilateral productivity reforms so soon? Is there a universe in which Australia could accept the G20 leadership baton from Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on September 5-6, in the absence of this newly re-minted Prime Minister?

Kevin Rudd is, in thought, word and deed, the most remarkable leader the Labor Party has had this century. And the weirdest thing, after all this time, is that his colleagues still underestimate him so comprehensively.

In 2010, they thought he'd go away and lick his wounds in private. In 2013, they thought he'd pop off to an election and gallantly offset the worst of their projected downswing.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Grandiose, ambitious, confident - this Prime Minister is not about saving the furniture.

He is the furniture.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.